Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited (NNPCL) is optimizing efforts to ensure the penetration of Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) for powering vehicles nationwide – launching additional stations in Abuja and Lagos on Thursday, 04 July.
Speaking at the simultaneous inauguration of the facilities, the group chief executive of the NNPCL, Mele Kyari, stated that the government was determined to bring the use of gas-powered vehicles closer to the Nigerian people.
He declared that the CNG drive has since commenced and is irreversible, stressing that with the massive deployment of CNG stations nationwide, Nigerians will get a cleaner and cheaper source of energy.
Kyari said “It’s already rolling out across the country, you can see the benefit, people are saying that this works better. It’s cheaper, it’s cleaner and it’s accessible. And what we are going to do is to roll out across all the states of the federation. It’s already a work in progress, we will construct six CNG mother stations, spread across the country, between now and December, and you will see this happen”.
“We are also taking another step. We are building LNG stations in Ajaokuta, belonging to us, two with a partnership. What this does is to bring CNG closer across the country. Distance matters in transporting gas and that’s why we are doing this so that it becomes accessible and easier this is short term because as soon as we complete the AKK pipeline, it gets much closer to end users, and ultimately as we reduce the distance, the cost will come down”, he said.
He also added in speech saying, “We will see cheaper and cheaper fuel across the country, particularly areas that are distant from the source of the gas, especially in the northern part of the country” With this in place, he stated that Nigerians will find it cheaper to fuel their cars, with CNG becoming an alternative to expensive petrol which currently sells for over N900 per litre in some states in Nigeria. “And I would like to also indicate that there’s no turning back on this. There’s simply no way to turn back because this is the right thing to do.”
